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The Internet

Submission + - Sky outsources e-mail to Google (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rupert Murdoch owned UK Satellite TV provider Sky has been investing hugely over the last year to rollout a LLU based DSL broadband service, enabling the apparently magical "triple play" that will allow them to compete with the cable guys and incumbent telco BT. They seem to have trumped BT's tie up with Yahoo! by announcing to customers in e-mails this week that they will be outsourcing their e-mail to Google, becoming the latest high profile ISP customer for the Google Apps service, adding 716,000 potential customers to the platform. No news on the financials of the deal have been forthcoming — or in fact, on who is paying who!
Security

Entering Passwords Through Eye Movement 73

Posted by Zonk from the amaze-your-friends-scare-your-mom dept.
Stu Dennison writes "Ars Technica has a post up on a new service called EyePassword. EyePassword is a system that attempts to mitigate the issues of shoulder-surfing via a novel approach to user input: no hands required. With EyePassword, a user enters their password using an on-screen keyboard that detects the orientation of their pupils. From the article: 'The gaze-tracking system functions by shining an invisible infrared beam on a user's face. The beam produces a tiny reflection in the eyes that stays put, no matter where a person looks (provided they do not move their head too much). By tracking the stable position of this reflection and the relative position of a person's pupils, the system is able to calculate which keys or buttons a user wishes to input, and interpret the information accordingly ... more than 80 percent of those tested preferred the EyePassword method. Additionally, when testing EyePassword input using an input method where users visually "dwell" on the characters they wish to input, error rates were comparable to keyboarding.'"
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - The truth why Apple is successful in what they do (businesstock.net)

Submitted by
shadowzrevo
shadowzrevo writes: "The 'Apple empire' once almost collapsed, and it is the iPod brand which brought Apple back to life. Now, Apple company is alive and well, not to mention that it is also very successful in its recent product; such as the iPod, iMac, and the iPhone. However, have you ever wondered how Apple came back with such a big hit? And have you ever wondered why apple is so successful in what they do? Well, it's all about you, and how they treated you!

http://www.businesstock.net/2007/08/31/why-apple-w as-so-successful-in-what-they-do/"
Programming

Submission + - Theo de Raadt Explains License Modification (undeadly.org)

Submitted by
Ray Lai
Ray Lai writes: "Theo de Raadt explains the legal ramifications of changing code licenses:

It is illegal to modify a license unless you are the owner/author, because it is a legal document. If there are multiple owners/authors, they must all agree. A person who receives the file under two licenses can use the file in either way.... but if they distribute the file (modified or unmodified!), they must distribute it with the existing license intact, because the licenses we all use have statements which say that the license may not be removed.
"
Music

Submission + - UK Performers & YouTube Reach Royalty Deal (monstersandcritics.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "YouTube has agreed to pay a blanket fee to the MCPS-PRS Alliance to license more than ten million works of music. While there's no mention of what this flat fee is, it will be interesting to see if this is just a deal too good to pass up or an admission of need to license works from YouTube. It also remains to be seen if licensing these songs will cascade to the users and the content they own on YouTube."
Communications

Submission + - File Sharing advances

Submitted by sykesm
sykesm writes: BBC has an interesting article "I was doing research back in 1999 looking at an obscure website called Slashdot," he said. "It was a technology-related news website controlled by volunteers and it actually worked. A few people would post bad things but 99% of users were nice." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6971904.stm The team has created a peer-to-peer system called Tribler in which selfless sharers earn faster upload and download speeds but leechers are penalised.
Space

Submission + - Antique Viking Technology (smh.com.au)

Submitted by sea_stuart
sea_stuart writes: COMPARED with the latest electronic wizardry, they are fossils from the age of the techno-dinosaurs. Yet the bank of computers that would look at home in black-and-white episodes of Doctor Who cannot be junked. Housed at the Tidbinbilla space tracking station, outside Canberra, the 1970s hardware is now our world's only means of chatting with two robot pioneers exploring the solar system's outer limits. Today Voyager 1 is humanity's most remote object, 15.5 billion kilometres from the sun. Voyager 2 is 12.5 billion kilometres from it. Both continue beaming home reports, but now they are space-age antiques. "The Voyager technology is so outmoded," said Tidbinbilla's spokesman, Glen Nagle, "we have had to maintain heritage equipment to talk to them." http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/thirty-years-tr acking-faint-whispers-from-space/2007/08/31/118806 7368154.html
Security

Journal Journal: Techers Credit Union Using Security Tokens for Online Access

Journal by Aehgts
Mum received a letter from the Teachers Credit Union offering a 'first one's free' deal on a security token for online access. Seems this type of key is trickling down into the masses at last. This one is offered by Australia Post as announced back in February; FTA:
This low-cost, secure and convenient service enables financial institutions to implement strong, multi-factor, one time password (OTP) security tokens for online banking authentication.
Television

MythTV Scheduling Service Reveals Pricing 236

Posted by CowboyNeal from the filling-a-void dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A group of open source developers have been working behind the scenes to create a new service known as Schedules Direct to provide affordable scheduling data for North American users of MythTV. Today, they've announced an initial pricing plan of $15 for a 3 month block, non-recurring. Details are still fairly light at the moment, but there's a mailing list and a FAQ available on the site — one notable tidbit is that the developers 'expect pricing to drop by the end of the initial term. Our goal is $20/year.' This comes weeks before the planned shutdown of Zap2it Labs' Data Direct service mentioned previously."
Operating Systems

Submission + - 30 things I've learned from using Linux ... (zdnet.com)

Submitted by BBQ-buster
BBQ-buster writes: ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has an interesting article called "30 things I've learned from using Linux ..." where a long-time Windows user discusses some of the things that he's learned from dabbling with Linux for a few months.

1. That I don't have to pay money to get my hands on a credible operating system.
2. There are far more Linux distros available that I have time to try them out.
3. Switching to Linux does not mean trouble-free computing.
4. Whenever you ask a Linux user which is the best distro, invariably the answer you'll get is the name of the distro that they're using.
5. In my opinion, the best Linux distro is Ubuntu.
6. No matter how much I like a GUI, and no matter how lazy years of using Windows made me, there's a lot to be said for using a command line.


Overall it's a very positive Linux article that should inspire others to give Linux a go.
Software

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Good Lightweight Freenix Desktops

Submitted by that this is not und
that this is not und writes: My main 'freenix' desktop system is an aging Dell Optiplex GX1 with a P3-450 and 768 M of memory running NetBSD. This used to be a dynamite system in it's day. When I first started experimenting with Linux, my main system was a 486-33 and we all were snapping up used 386-anything systems (386sx-16 comes to mind) to hang more Linux out on our personal networks at home.

A P3-450 should still be a useful system, and I make plenty of good use of it. But I've done so by remaining fairly agnostic in the 'Desktop wars' that go on in the land of software bloat: I don't run a KDE or Gnome-based desktop, I have a years-old well tweaked .fvwm2rc file and use FVWM.

There are limitations in using this for a Window Manager, but none that really impede my use. I run Sylpheed for email, use the Xfe file browser, and (of course) Mozilla SeaMonkey for my main portal to the 'Web.' I don't really do 'K' anything and consider GTK to be a bunch of useful widgets, not something to base my world around.

There are a bunch of Window Managers in the NetBSD packages collection that I haven't tried. I thought it would be an interesting discussion to discuss the alternative classic 'X Window System' window managers (as opposed to the all-and-mighty 'Big Two' Desktop Environments.) Is there any cool stuff being done with Motif, now that it's free? What are the best window managers out there in 2007?
Google

Submission + - Google becoming a force in national campaigns (onthemedia.org)

Submitted by
Reverberant
Reverberant writes: "NPR's On the Media ran a segment on Google. While the segment touched about the widely reported story of Google's low privacy ranking, the segment also examined Google's growing influence on national politics by way of YouTube. The correspondents speculate that, in the not-to-distant future, candidates may have to make visits to Google's Mountain View headquarters in the same way that candidates today have sit-downs with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register "

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